Its sad that's its becoming almost routine to hear about the heroes of the game becoming linking to steroids and other performance enhancing drugs, that even the guys you were sure weren't doing it were are all falling by the wayside. It seems now that it is Manny Ramirez's turn to be exposed as a cheater and a defilier of the game joinin the ranks of countless stars who have come to embody the steroid era and it is a shame indeed. Despite his recent controversey with the messy divorce from Boston Manny has been regarded as among the best and brightest, one of the all time great hitters this game has ever seen and a wacky and carefree personality to go along with it. Anyone who ever watched any baseball had heard about Manny being Manny doing bizzare and funny stuff like going behind the scoreboard at Fenway to take a leak, jumping for a catch and giving a fan a high five, and so on and so forth, he gave the impression that he was a guy who just loved the game and loved having a good time. But beneath this flip exterior lay the heart of a warrior, a man obsessed with his craft of hitting who tirelessly worked to be one of the game's most feared hitters. In short, Manny seemed to epitmoize what was good and right in baseball, boundless talent that allowed him to acheieve unbelievable feats, but still being a kid at heart and loving the game of baseball (and that's coming from a yankee fan). But now it seems beneath the surface lied a dark and sinister secret, that those amazing feats were not so natural, that it was somehow tainted. Yet despite this overwhelming sentiment, I feel that more than anything this is not about Manny but yet another example of how rampant steroid use has been. Indeed, it wasn't just the Giambi's and Bonds' of the world but even the natural looking Manny and A-Rod, that everyone was in on the take, to get the edge to be the best, and who can blame them?
Although it is not entirely clear yet what Manny took or tested positive the prevailing view is that it was a woman's fertility drug, a drug that is used by steroid users after they cylce off of steroids to regain their natural production of testosterone in their bodies. If that is the case like A-Rod and all the users before him his credibility seems to have vanished. How can we know he hasn't been juicing all these years? He's been caught in a time of new tougher testing, and its pretty easy to deduce that if he was doing it now when it was harder to do, he probably was doing it when there was no testing, namely his time in boston. Indeed, Bill Simmons laments this point and whether their titles are now tainted, that he and Ortiz who also seems like a likely candidate for juicing although nothing has been discovered or proven, that they are less legitimate because they were won by ill-gotten means and I don't blame his concern. After 86 years of futility the Sox exercised their collective demons, but they did it by cheating, by dishonoring the game, but I do not agree. As so many positive tests have shown and so many have said like the incomprable Jose Canesco this was not just a few isolated players, practically everyone doing it, hitters pitchers everyone, and why not? Sure it was illegal, but it was easily gotten and there was no testing and no repurcussions for doing it, it was a win-win, you get better baseball through chemistry and the fans are the none the wiser, everyone wins! Of course, the reality is that in the end the game of baseball's integrity is the real loser, tarnishing the accomplishments of the players who did it without any of that and played the game the right way and thats the shame of it.
But is it fair to just say well no one gets in the hall of fame now, all the cheaters can forget it? I don't think so. Yes these men were cheaters, but they were a product of their era, caught up in the demands of the time. That doesn't make their misdeeds any less wrong, but more understandable. These are men of extraordinary ability and drive, men whos livlihood relies on their ability to throw or hit a ball, and they sought to get the edge, to stay on top as long as they could. Indeed if you want to blame anyone or anything you must blame the whole of Major League Baseball and the culture that allowed this to go on and in fact encourage it, an era that baseball sought to save itself from the lockout, but in the end it seems to be a phyrric victory. So do I think any less of Manny now? No, it just means he's just what I thought he was, human, just like everyone else.
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